A known parking assist apparatus disclosed in JP 2001-55099A displays an image captured by a camera provided at a rear end of the vehicle, when a driver executes a back-in parking operation and positions a shift lever to a reverse position, a steering wheel operation guideline, a vehicle width guideline and a locus guideline are superimposed on the image captured by a rear camera and displayed on a monitor.
As the vehicle is moved backward, the steering wheel operation guideline approaches a target point. When the steering wheel operation guideline reaches the target point, the driver stops the vehicle and operates a steering wheel. While the steering wheel has been operated, a steering wheel operation amount guide mark is moved on the monitor. After the steering wheel operation amount guide mark reaches a target point, the driver further moves the vehicle backward to be in a parking space such as a parking stall appropriately.
When the vehicle is guided so as to be in a parking position, the vehicle needs to be moved appropriately as much as possible along a locus, which is calculated in order to guide the vehicle to be in the parking position. Especially, when an inexperienced driver executes a parking operation, or when a parking space is narrow, the parking assist operation needs to be executed precisely. By use of the above mentioned known parking assist apparatus, although the driver can execute the back-in parking operation accurately, when it comes to parallel parking, because the vehicle needs to be moved back and forth, and the steering wheel needs to be moved to one direction and the other direction; it is important for the driver to understand a relative relation between a current position of the vehicle and the parking position and understand the current position of the vehicle relative to an appropriate locus. Especially, because the driver moves the vehicle so as to follow the appropriate locus toward to the parking position in a manner where he/she confirms a relative relation between the vehicle and the parking position on the image displayed on the monitor, the image on the monitor needs to be easy to understand.
A need thus exists to provide a parking assist apparatus by which, even when the vehicle is parallel-parked by moving the vehicle back and forth and rotating the steering wheel in one direction and the other direction, the driver appropriately operates the vehicle, on the basis of the information displayed on the monitor, to be in the parking position.